1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to an information processing apparatus, a device management method, and a computer-readable storage medium containing a computer program with computer-executable instructions therefor. The use of aspects of the present invention may be suitable to control operations of at least one device through a single device driver.
2. Description of the Related Art
Generally, a device driver (e.g., printer driver) may be used to make an image forming system execute print processing, the image forming system including an information processing apparatus and a plurality of image forming apparatuses that are connected to one another via a network. The device driver is typically software provided to control the image forming apparatus, so as to make the image forming apparatus execute processing such as printing, and may be installed in the information processing apparatus.
A single device driver can control a plurality of image forming apparatuses connected to a network. However, the capabilities of the image forming apparatuses are not necessarily identical with one another. Therefore, when the device driver controls the image forming apparatuses, it may be difficult for some of the image forming apparatuses to use the function of the device driver. Therefore, Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2005-174121 and Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2003-162388 have proposed technologies for preventing a user from setting a function of the device driver, in the case where the function is difficult to use for some of the image forming apparatuses.
Furthermore, to make the image forming apparatus execute the print processing by using the device driver, the image processing apparatus typically should acquire resource information from the image forming apparatus, and set the resource information to the device driver. Therefore, the following technology has been proposed. Namely, a user manually operates the user interface of a device driver, and an information processing apparatus acquires resource information from an image forming apparatus based on details of the operation, and sets the acquired resource information to the device driver. Furthermore, Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2005-25755 has proposed a technology for allowing an information processing apparatus to automatically acquire resource information from an image forming apparatus connected to the information processing apparatus via a network, and set the acquired resource information to a device driver. According to the above-described technology, the resource information set to the device driver can be updated and set not only at the installation time, but also after the installation and/or when the resource of the image forming apparatus is updated.